Midnight at the Lost and Found
by Tez
Summary: Eliot Spencer meets Tessa Quinn. Pre-series, Eliot/OC. Prequel to Objects in the Rearview Mirror.
1. Midnight at the Lost and Found

A/N: Because Eliot and Tessa's relationship can be explained entirely through Meat Loaf songs. Leverage and Eliot Spencer aren't mine, and Tessa Quinn doesn't belong to anybody but herself. Rated T for language.

* * *

Tessa Quinn shouldered her rifle, checking to make sure her boots hadn't left any prints on the carpet of the general's office. The job hadn't really been her style - if it'd been up to her, she would've simply snuck in and slipped a fast-acting undetectable poison into the brandy that the general drank every evening - but the money had been good, and her client had stipulated that he wanted the general shot through the heart. Work was work, she'd decided, and the fact that the general was a truly vicious son of a bitch was an unexpected perk. Until she had the reputation to pick and choose her jobs, she'd have to play by other people's rules once in a while.

She pulled herself up into the air shaft, her slender frame easily supported by the metal ducts. She'd come in through a window in one of the third floor rooms, but she made it a policy never to take the same route in and out of a job after she'd nearly been caught last year. From the blueprints of the military complex, she could crawl through a few hundred feet of ductwork and end up at the intake vent along the west perimeter of the building. It would be another half a mile to her stolen getaway vehicle, which she'd hidden off the road in a thick copse of trees; an easy hike for a hunter who ran ten miles a day as part of her regular routine.

The general's office was on the ground floor, as was the intake vent, so Tessa had expected it to be a fast escape. It probably would have been, too, if the ducts hadn't run through the building's makeshift prison area.

The laughter was what caught her attention. Plenty of sounds were normal for that part of the building, but laughter wasn't one of them. She weighed the risk of stopping to find out what was going on against the potential risk of not knowing the situation and decided to make a brief detour, sliding noiselessly into a side duct with a ventilation grate that looked down into the room where the laughter was coming from.

There were three uniformed men there; guards, most likely, since this was the area where they held their prisoners. They were standing around a rough-hewn wooden table, onto which they'd strapped a shirtless man who was mumbling words she couldn't quite make out and bleeding from half a dozen deep cuts on his chest. Even from her vantage point in the rafters, she could see the prisoner's flushed face and the fevered glaze of his startlingly blue eyes. His wounds were likely infected, which explained his nonsensical babbling. He was probably delirious.

Tessa considered her options, wincing in sympathy as the guards attached alligator clamps to the semi-conscious prisoner's skin. Electroshock torture was an unpleasant way to die. With a barely audible sigh, she moved her rifle's stock up to her shoulder, bringing the prisoner into her sights. It was far too dangerous to try and rescue him, and he might well be as evil as the man she'd just killed, but she couldn't just leave him there to suffer. It might be days before the guards tired of their games or he succumbed to the infection. She could put him out of his misery and be out of the building before the guards even realized what she'd done. Her finger was tightening on the trigger when she finally understood the words he kept repeating.

"Daddy, please…"

The guards let out another spate of laughter and Tessa froze. Maybe the guards thought they were the cause of that anguished plea, or that the prisoner was pleading for his father to help him. Tessa knew better, and the words cut straight to her heart. How many times had she begged that way, said those same words in that same voice, terrified and helpless?

One of the guards flicked his hand across the prisoner's chest and another cut appeared, blood running in rivulets where the guard's knife had sliced his skin. The prisoner moaned and something inside Tessa snapped.

The guard who'd cut him was the first to die, collapsing with a wet gurgle as Tessa's bullet transected his trachea and lodged in his spine. The other two were dead before the first guard hit the ground, one with a bullet through his eye and the other with a hole in the middle of his forehead. Tessa kicked out the grate and dropped eight feet to the dirt-covered floor, landing with a jolt that she barely felt through her haze of fury.

Up close, the prisoner was in even worse shape than he'd seemed to be from afar. She grabbed the first guard's knife from the ground, cutting away the restraints and disconnecting the prisoner from the clamps they'd attached to him. She didn't bother to call herself ten kinds of fool for delaying her own escape or for firing her rifle from inside the ducts, where even the muted sound from her silencer would echo and might alert the rest of the guards. There would be time for self-recrimination later, assuming she survived this particular lapse in judgment.

Getting the man up into the ducts was nearly impossible, given his half-conscious state, and eventually she had to shift the heavy wooden table over to the vent and stand on it in order to shove him up into the ductwork. She considered just leaving the table there, since she'd already made a complete mess of things, but ingrained habit forced her to return the table to its former position. She did take the opportunity to lift a few items from the dead guards before taking a running jump at the vent opening and pulling herself in, closing the vent grate behind them.

Dragging him through the ducts was relatively easy, since his bare skin was slippery with sweat and blood and didn't offer much resistance in the way of friction. Through some minor miracle, they made it to the intake vent without being caught or hearing any alarms going off, but Tessa knew it was just a matter of time before either the dead guards or the dead general were discovered.

Once she'd clambered out of the shaft onto the grass outside, she pulled the injured man out after her. He blinked up at her and she realized for the first time how good-looking he was. Or would have been, anyway, if he hadn't been covered in blood and grime.

"Look at me," she said suddenly, putting her hands on his shoulders and willing him to focus as he started to slump forward. They absolutely could not afford for him to pass out right now. "Hey. Listen. I know you're hurting, and I'm trying to help you, but we're going to have to go a little further before we're out of trouble. We have to go through those woods, all right? And I'll help you as much as I can, but I'm not big enough to carry you, so you're going to have to walk. Can you do that?"

He moaned again, wordlessly, but nodded.

Tessa exhaled sharply. "Good. Let's go."

She put his arm around her shoulders, wincing at his muffled cry of pain. Both of his shoulders had extensive bruising that suggested they'd been recently dislocated, but there wasn't anything she could do about that now. At this point, his only choices were to stay here and die or go with her and have a fighting chance at living through this.

When she stood, he stood with her, and as she started out toward the car, he leaned heavily on her but managed to stumble along beside her. She couldn't help the proud little smile that tugged at her lips. Whoever he was, he was a fighter.

The trip to the car wasn't anything like the pleasant hike she'd envisioned at the beginning of this job. She never could have managed it if she weren't far stronger than she looked, and even with that, she still couldn't have gotten him to the car if he'd been fully unconscious. He wasn't particularly tall, but every inch of him was exceptionally well-muscled, and he probably had a good eighty pounds on her.

Tessa heaved a sigh of relief at the sight of the Jeep, and together they half-walked, half-staggered the last few feet to reach it. She loaded the man into the backseat and he collapsed with a groan. By the time she had the Jeep started, he was unconscious again. Just like she'd promised herself, she cursed her own idiocy all the way back to her safehouse.

* * *

Eliot woke up in an unfamiliar bed, which wasn't particularly unusual for him. The handcuffs anchoring him to the bedstead weren't entirely unheard of either, but the IV in his arm and the bandages around his chest suggested that this wasn't merely the aftermath of a wild Saturday night.

"Good morning, Eliot."

He jerked his head to the right and saw an unfamiliar woman sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room.

"That is your name, isn't it?" she continued, closing the book she was reading and setting it aside as she rose. "Eliot Spencer. Retrieval Specialist. Most recently suspected of stealing the Sapphire Monkey of Avi-Nalan, worth nearly two million dollars, from General Korota's personal art collection." Her smile wasn't quite as friendly as he could have hoped. "I did a little research while you were sleeping."

Eliot tried to respond, but his mouth was dry and the words stuck in his throat. The woman offered him a glass with a straw in it. He weighed the odds that it held poison, then gave a mental shrug and drank from it. If she was the one who'd gone to all this trouble to rescue him from Korota and patch him up, she probably wasn't going to waste all that effort just to kill him now.

"Thanks," he murmured, his voice still rough from all the shouting he'd done while they'd tortured him.

"So what did you do with it?"

He looked blankly at her and she rolled her eyes.

"The monkey, Spencer. What did you do with the monkey?"

"I wish I'd…never met…that fucking monkey," he replied slowly, his ribs complaining with every word. The woman stared at him for a moment, disbelieving, and then dissolved into laughter. He might have still been half-dead from torture and dehydration, but that didn't keep him from noticing how beautiful she was when she laughed.

When her laughter had mostly subsided, he caught her gaze again.

"You know my name. You got one of your own?"

"Quinn," she replied, brushing her copper-colored hair out of her eyes. "This is my safehouse. I found you in the guard complex and brought you here."

He glanced around the room, approving of what he found. There was a large assortment of medical equipment, three separate deadbolts on the door, bulletproof glass in the windows, and a sniper rifle resting on the table next to Quinn's chair. The rifle was an Accuracy International AWC, and it didn't take his weapons expertise to see how lovingly it was maintained. Quinn was clearly a woman who understood the value of a good gun.

"You should see my knife collection," Quinn said, noticing how his gaze kept returning to the sniper rifle. "I'd show it to you, but I'd hate to do all this work to keep you alive just to have you die of envy."

"Quinn," he repeated, dredging the depths of his fuzzy memory for a piece of gossip he'd heard several months ago. "Any relation to the Quinn who killed Ishikama?"

She gave him a mocking bow. "At your service."

"Huh." There hadn't been any love lost between him and the Yakuza, and if assassination were an art form, he'd consider Ishikama's staged suicide to be a masterpiece. "You do good work."

"High praise, coming from the great Eliot Spencer." There was some irony in her voice, but under it he heard respect and was glad that, in this case, his reputation seemed to have preceded him.

"You have a first name?" he asked, then considered his question for a moment. It was possible that Quinn was a girl's name. "Or maybe a last name?"

She smiled wryly. "Tessa."

"Tessa Quinn." Eliot fixed the name with her face in his mind. "Pretty name. Pretty girl."

"Pretty slim chance that flattery's going to get you anything from me," she finished for him, but that smile still danced on her soft pink lips, and he couldn't restrain an answering grin.

"So, Tessa," he said, watching her expression carefully. "Any chance you're going to untie me? Or did you have…other plans?"

She blushed, which was both unexpected and charming in a professional assassin of her caliber.

"I have to go," she replied, and he realized then that she was dressed for the outdoors, a warm coat draped over one arm and a packed bag by the door. "I have another job and I can't be late. I was just waiting for you to wake up." She dangled the keys to the handcuffs from her finger, then dropped them lightly onto his chest. "From what I've heard about you, I'm sure you'll be able to get yourself out of those cuffs, steal a car of your own, and head back to your real life. This apartment is paid up through the end of the month, so stay as long as you need to. Whatever you don't use, either take it with you or get rid of it. I won't use this safehouse again."

"Wait, that's it?" he asked, frowning as she shouldered the rifle. "Not even a kiss goodbye?"

"You want a kiss?" She grinned at him, green eyes bright with mischief. "Come find me. Maybe you'll get one."

"Wait," he protested again, and Tessa paused with her hand on the doorknob. "I don't understand. Why help me? You don't even know me."

She turned to meet his gaze again, and her expression made his breath catch in his throat. It was a look he'd seen before, the kind of look soldiers gave each other when they talked about the parts of war that anyone who hadn't been there couldn't possibly understand, born of the camaraderie that came from shared suffering.

"I know enough."

By the time he'd processed what she'd said, she was gone. He stared at the closed door for a moment, then shook off his stunned paralysis and got to work unlocking the handcuffs.

* * *

_Hangin' on barely, hitch a ride away  
__Midnight at the lost and found  
Lost souls in the hunting ground  
A remedy for all your ills  
Midnight at the lost and found  
_


	2. Where the Rubber Meets the Road

A/N: Another Eliot/Tessa clip, courtesy of yet another Meat Loaf song. If you're familiar with the song, it will probably strike you as an odd choice, but I like the way the lyrics fit into the context of the story. Rated T for strong language.

* * *

Eliot Spencer crouched behind the crumbling brick wall of an abandoned building, listening for any signs of life in the alley ahead of him. Hearing nothing, he advanced slowly toward the service entrance to the building, hoping that the information he'd beaten out of Gallagher's lackey was correct. He needed to find Tessa and get them both out of here before everything went to hell.

It had been months since his first run-in with Tessa Quinn, but it felt like years. Time passed differently in a war zone. Once the revolution had ended and Croatia was liberated, he'd found himself at loose ends. It hadn't taken him long to locate a bar, and he'd toasted the country's new-won freedom along with the rest of the patrons. Once they realized who he was, he was treated to several rounds of the local moonshine, which the other patrons called _trapa_. It was deceptively strong; after a few drinks, he was startled to find himself a little lightheaded, and he treated the stuff with far more caution after that.

He'd been pleasantly drunk when several of the soldiers he'd fought beside in the revolution showed up and insisted on buying him yet another round. They told him then that they'd been specifically looking for him, that they'd overheard a rumor he might be interested in. A splinter cell of the IRA had apparently decided that the Belfast Agreement didn't apply to them and was looking to start a full-on war against the British. A few of their people had come to Croatia to acquire weapons that they planned to smuggle back to Ireland, and the victorious Croatian revolutionaries hadn't had any qualms about selling off some of their now-excess armament to a fellow group of freedom fighters. The other soldiers thought that Eliot Spencer, war hero extraordinaire, might want to involve himself in the cause, although they weren't entirely sure which side he would end up fighting for.

He hadn't really wanted to get involved - he'd had enough of war over the past few months to last him quite a while - but it wasn't like he had anything to go home to now. Aimee had been the last person left in the world who cared about him, and while he'd been busy fighting for this country's freedom, she'd moved on with her life. Forget that she'd promised to wait for him, that she'd agreed to wear his ring…

While he'd still been moping over Aimee's betrayal, the soldiers had told him the detail that convinced him to shake off his melancholy and get on the next plane to Ireland.

The IRA had hired Tessa Quinn.

* * *

_Somewhere some girl is crazy  
And some boy's half out of his head_

* * *

Initially, this job had been nothing more than a diversion, a way for him to avoid facing the fact that he was now completely alone. He'd offered his services to the IRA cell, who'd accepted him without hesitation given his fierce reputation for leading rebels and underdogs to victory. He hadn't really wanted a reputation for sticking up for the 'little guy', since the 'big guy' tended to pay better, but when it came down to it, he had trouble choosing to side with governments. They tended to bully their opponents, and Eliot hated bullies.

His reputation had helped him in this case, anyway, and Tessa had been gratifyingly delighted to see him. They'd spent the last three weeks flirting over homemade explosives and blueprints of military installations, waiting for the cell leader, Michael Gallagher, to decide it was time to make their move. The rest of the group was made up of diehard zealots, not hired help like Tessa and Eliot, so the two of them were left to each other's company most of the time.

Eliot liked it that way. He'd learned a lot about Tessa over the past few weeks, although he still wasn't any closer to figuring out why she'd decided to rescue him from Korota's people after the fiasco with that damned monkey. He'd been pleased to learn that their ethical codes were compatible, which would make it easier for them to work together without ending up at each other's throats. Most people didn't think about ethics when they thought about hitters or assassins, but in their line of work they had to have some standards or they ran the risk of losing themselves completely. Eliot didn't fight against innocents - kids, civilians, other non-combatants. Tessa had made a face at that, pointing out that even civilians were rarely innocent, but admitted that she refused to take any job where she'd have to kill a child.

Those ethical codes, hers and his, were the reason that he was looking for her now, trying to find her and get her out of here before Gallagher figured out that Eliot knew what was really going on. The service door in the alley was unlocked, as usual, and he let himself in, trying to look nonchalant. The three members of the resistance cell who were currently downstairs in their makeshift headquarters were involved in a poker game, and paid him no attention beyond a quick glance to make sure he wasn't an intruder. Normally, he would've growled something rude about their lax security, but right now he had more pressing concerns.

Tessa was upstairs and alone, as he'd hoped, pouring over the blueprints for a British military installation that Gallagher was considering targeting. There were several high-ranking officers currently stationed there who'd been outspoken in their support of the Belfast Agreement, and Gallagher had mentioned that it would be no bad thing if Tessa could remove them.

"Tess?" he murmured, and she glanced up at him with a smile.

"Hey, Eliot," she greeted him. "I thought you had things to do tonight."

"I did 'em." He came up behind her, leaning in to whisper in her ear. To any observer, it would have looked like an extension of the playful flirtation they'd been carrying on since he arrived in Dublin. "Keep smiling in case we're being watched. You and I have to get out of here right now, and we can't let anyone know where we're going."

She turned in the circle of his arms, pressing her cheek against his and lowering her voice so she couldn't be overheard.

"That'll be easy," she murmured in his ear, "since you haven't told me where we're going or why."

"Gallagher's dirty, Tess. He's planning to take those bombs you helped him build and use them to blow up British boarding schools, not military outposts."

She was silent for a long moment.

"You're sure?" she whispered finally, and he nodded.

"I beat it out of Brown about five minutes ago, then came to find you. When he wakes up, he's gonna tell Gallagher that I know, and you and I need to be far away from here before then."

"I took this job on very specific conditions," Tessa replied, and even though her voice was barely audible he could hear the steel beneath it. "Gallagher knew what would happen if he crossed me."

Eliot didn't like the sound of that. "Are you saying you're not gonna run?"

"Oh, I'm going to run. I'll need to, after what I'm going to do." Her gaze flickered up to meet his for an instant. "This is going to be messy, Eliot. You don't have to stick around to see it."

"Excuse me?"

"If you feel like you owe me something for what happened in North Korea…" She exhaled, her breath warm against the side of his neck. "I saved you because I wanted to, not to put you in my debt. Besides, you came back here to warn me even though you didn't have to. If you want to get out of here now, before people start dying, then go."

The nearness of her, the warmth of her body and the soft floral scent of her hair, was intoxicating enough that he was able to resist his first impulse, which was to demand where the hell she got off thinking that he would leave her here alone to face Gallagher. Instead, he slid his hands down to rest on her waist, pulling her closer.

"What if I told you that I want to see Gallagher get what's coming to him as much as you do?"

She tilted her head back to look at him. "Then I'd say you're in for a treat."

"What's the plan?"

"That depends. How many of the others know that the real targets for the bombings were going to be schools full of innocent children?"

"All of them," Eliot said, regretful. He wasn't friends with any of these IRA guys, but he was at least on friendly terms with a few of them. This was yet another reason that he always worked alone; other people simply couldn't be trusted when it came to the important things in life. "Tess…is that what I think it is?"

She'd reached into the pocket of her peacoat and produced a little device that, to the uninitiated, might have looked like a keyless entry remote for a car. Eliot knew it wasn't anything nearly that harmless.

"It is. I don't build bombs that I can't control, and I certainly don't hand them over to people who might use them in a way I don't approve of without a little insurance."

"Did you know that Gallagher was -"

"Was going to try to use my bombs to kill a bunch of kids?" Her lips twisted into a bitter parody of a smile. "No, but I'm not exactly new at this. I figured it'd be more likely that he'd try to get out of paying me. I've found that the more someone pushes their patriotism down my throat, the more likely they are to try and skip out on the check."

He snorted. Based on his past experiences, she had a point.

"So - what? We'll hang out across the street and wait for Gallagher and the rest of them to get back?"

Tessa nodded. "All of the bombs are still in this building. Once Gallagher gets here…" She made a one-handed gesture that indicated an explosion, her eyes glittering like diamonds in the low light. "Boom. Problem solved."

* * *

_Somewhere somebody's fearless  
And someone won't wind up dead_

* * *

"This could have gone better," Eliot managed to say, between sucking in greedy lungfuls of air. His calves were burning, their unplanned sprint through the shadier parts of Dublin quickly turning into a long-distance race to the death.

"The plan worked," she pointed out, but he heard the hitch in her voice that told him she wasn't unaffected by their frenetic run. "The bombs went off. Gallagher's dead."

"I should've killed Brown when I had the chance."

Tessa was silent, probably because he was right. Brown was a liability, and he'd taken a calculated risk leaving him alive. That gamble had failed; Brown had gotten to headquarters just in time to see the explosion, and he'd immediately grabbed all of the survivors he could find and sent them after Eliot and Tessa.

He chanced a look behind them. He didn't see Brown or the four other members of the cell who'd managed to escape the explosion, but that didn't mean they'd abandoned the chase. The odds of them being able to lose five city natives in the warren of back alleys were low, and it was far more likely that he and Tessa would end up lost themselves, or in a dead end, and be forced to try and fight their way out. Not that he was averse to a good fight, but he wasn't sure he wanted to pit his hand-to-hand skills and Tessa's lone semiautomatic pistol against five guys with machine guns.

"We need to get off the road," he said, which was true, but no better options had presented themselves yet. When they reached the bridge, a glimmer of an idea hit him, and then he heard a car behind them revving its engine and the distinctive sound of rapid gunfire from an AK-47.

Brown and the others had been carrying AK-47s, which meant they were probably in the car that was speeding toward them, which meant that they needed to get off of this bridge. Now.

"Jump!" he shouted, the noise from the fast-approaching car nearly drowning out his voice.

"What?" Tessa demanded, whipping her head around to look at him.

"Jump!"

She hesitated a moment too long. Eliot's hand closed around her wrist, and she shrieked as he pulled her over the side of the bridge with him.

They fell fifteen feet to the water, Eliot automatically assuming the freefall position he'd learned in training: legs and arms crossed, back straight, chin down. Tessa was slower to react, barely managing to get her arms and legs crossed before they hit the water. It was icy cold, the temperature driving Eliot's breath from his lungs in a rush of bubbles, and he fought his way back up to the surface.

He took a deep breath, treading water as he scanned the immediate area for any sign of Tessa. Despite her lighter body mass, she hadn't surfaced as fast as he had, and he was about to go back under to look for her when she finally broke the surface.

"Eliot," she choked, clearly struggling to stay above the waterline. He cursed under his breath; it hadn't even occurred to him that Tessa might not know how to swim. Three powerful strokes brought him to her side, and he slid his arm around her from behind, pulling her against him. Tessa was on her back now, Eliot on his side beneath her in the water and scissor-kicking to keep them both afloat.

"It's okay, darlin'," he promised. "I've got you. I'm not gonna let you drown."

"I was never…much of a swimmer," she panted, clinging tightly to the arm he'd wrapped around her.

"I spent a summer as a lifeguard," he told her. "We'll be fine."

"You were probably…only a lifeguard…to pick up girls," Tessa accused, having trouble catching her breath in the bitter cold of the water.

"You aren't wrong," he admitted, a grin audible in his voice. "But I also learned enough to get us both out of this alive."

"Why?"

"Why what?" he asked, unsure what she was asking.

"Why save me?" she demanded. "If you'd left me there, you could have gotten out clean."

"Why'd you save me from Korota?" he retorted, pulling her closer to him. "Turnabout's fair play. C'mon, darlin', before we both get hypothermia."

He towed Tessa nearly a mile and a half down the river, making sure her head stayed above water as they moved with the current. There was no one else in the water with them, suggesting that their pursuers either hadn't seen them jump or hadn't been willing to brave the water to come after them. When they reached the next bridge, he pulled her to the riverbank, clambering up onto the bank and tugging Tessa out of the water with him.

"Well, on the bright side, it doesn't look like anyone managed to follow us," he said, catching Tessa as she stumbled. "Careful, Tess. You okay?"

"T-twisted my ankle," she stuttered, shivering beneath his hands. "And it's f-fucking f-freezing out h-here."

Her lips were blue, he realized with a sinking heart, and she was even paler than usual. He'd joked about hypothermia, but it was a real possibility after going for a swim in the river in the middle of winter.

"Can you make it half a mile on foot?" he asked, watching her expression closely. If she couldn't, he had every intention of carrying her. There was no way he was going to let his rash decision to jump off the bridge end in her dying from exposure.

"With help," she replied, and he gave her points for admitting it. He knew plenty of hitters who would've lied to hide their weakness and might have gotten them both killed.

"Whatever you need, darlin'," he promised, wrapping his arm around her waist and hers around his shoulders to take the weight off of her bad ankle.

"Where are we going?"

"You think I'd come to work for the IRA without having a backup plan?" he asked, and she grinned ruefully in spite of the pain and the cold.

"I've never b-been much of a p-planner," she admitted as the two of them started to move toward the outskirts of town.

"Are you kidding? I saw you planning out those IRA hits. And you had a backup control for the bombs." She was almost obsessively detail oriented, and orchestrated her jobs down to the last microsecond. He couldn't imagine that she didn't have a contingency plan in case this gig went south.

"That's d-different. My jobs have t-to be precise. That's not how I _live_."

"How do you live, then?"

She looked up at him with eyes that were bright and glassy, probably from hypothermic shock, and smiled unsteadily.

"I live free, Eliot. I'm f-finally free."

He caught her as she collapsed, cradling her against his chest. Her breathing was shallow and slow, and he put on as much speed as he could manage. He had to get her inside and warmed up before it was too late.

* * *

_Somewhere two hearts are pounding  
And they don't care what's correct_

* * *

When she came to, she was lying in a bathtub full of water and someone was pulling off her sweater. Confused and disoriented, she reacted instinctively, and Eliot grunted as her right hook connected with his jaw.

"Fuck, Tessa," he snapped, tossing her wet sweater onto the bathroom floor and grabbing for her arms. She struggled against him mindlessly and he managed to get her into a basket hold, his legs pinning hers as his hands held her arms against her chest. Water surged over the side of the tub as she flailed, soaking the tile floor. "Hey, it's okay. It's just me, it's Eliot. You're safe."

He jerked his head quickly to one side to keep her from slamming the back of her head into his face. Clearly, his soothing tone was falling short of the mark.

"Quinn, cut that out_ now_," he demanded, channeling a combination of every battlefield commander he'd ever worked under, with a little bit of his mother thrown in for good measure. "Hold still!"

Incredibly, it seemed to work. She shivered violently in his grip but didn't try to pull away.

"That's better," he murmured. "Now, do you remember who I am?"

"Eliot S-spencer," she replied obediently, teeth chattering. "S-sorry. I d-didn't -"

"It's okay, Tess. You're in shock. You'll feel better once I can get you warm."

"Everything h-hurts," she breathed, and he nodded.

"That means the water is doing its job." The water in the tub was only lukewarm, but it was still sending little jolts of pain through his half-frozen extremities. She'd been far more affected by the cold than he was, so the heat would also be worse for her as her body temperature rose and circulation started to return in earnest. "If I let go of you, are you gonna hit me again?"

"P-probably not," she said, and he snorted with laughter.

"Good enough," he told her, loosening his hold on her. She turned around to face him, hesitating when she realized he'd stripped down to his underwear. He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Enjoying the scenery?" he added, when her gaze rested on his chest just a little too long.

"You're unbelievable," she muttered, but she was unable to keep the smile off of her lips. Eliot Spencer was a shameless flirt, even when they were both freezing cold and half-drowned.

"You're not so bad yourself," he pointed out, his eyes flicking over her bare torso, and she blushed hotly as she realized that he'd also managed to strip her down to her bra and panties while she was unconscious.

"Eliot -"

"Relax, darlin'." He gave her that irresistible grin that somehow melted away every objection she might have raised. "Let me get you all warmed up."

The look they shared could have set the room on fire, and for a moment Tessa was sure he was going to reach for her. When his hand touched the spigot instead, turning on the tap to send a fresh stream of almost-too-hot water into the tub, she tilted her head back against the porcelain to watch him. Every time she thought she had him pegged, he surprised her again. It was yet another reminder that she barely knew Eliot Spencer. She certainly shouldn't trust him like this, shouldn't be sitting in a bathtub half-naked with him, with his gorgeous blue eyes and his chiseled physique and his knee brushing against her hip in a way that made her heart beat faster.

No, she didn't know nearly enough about him, and now she wondered if it had occurred to him how little he knew about her.

* * *

_Somewhere somebody's fallin' in love  
Without a background check_

* * *

After what felt like an eternity in the bathtub, Tessa had finally stopped shivering. Eliot didn't have much in the way of clothes stored at the safehouse, but he coaxed her into changing out of her wet underthings and into an oversized t-shirt that hung like a dress on her small frame. He gave her as much privacy to change as was possible in their tiny hideout, going into the bedroom-slash-living-room of the studio apartment and finding himself a set of dry cutoff sweatpants. He'd only left a few days' worth of clothes here, not really expecting to need it, and he was seriously short on the general supplies he'd like to have on hand. The hot water had been an unanticipated benefit; he'd only spent a few minutes here at the beginning of this job, just long enough to drop off a few things and pay for a month's rent. He hadn't even been sure that the place had working electricity, let alone a water heater.

"This has seen better days," Tessa said, and he glanced over to find that she'd left the steamy confines of the bathroom and was inspecting the rusty space heater in the corner. "As much as I hate to admit it, if I plug it in it'll probably burn the whole building down."

"I'll keep you warm," he volunteered, and grinned at her raised eyebrows. "Hey, we don't have many options, darlin'. The cord on the heater is frayed, and we've only got one bed and one blanket. We're going to have to share body heat."

"I'm starting to suspect that this whole debacle may have been a ruse to get me into bed," she informed him archly, but her eyes sparkled when her gaze met his. She limped a little as she started toward the bed, and then he was there, scooping her up in his arms as she swallowed a yelp of protest. "Eliot!"

"Let's get you tucked in and I'll take a look at that ankle," he replied, all business again in the face of her injury.

"It's just a sprain," she argued as Eliot dropped her lightly on the bed, tucking their sole blanket around her. At least the wool blanket was thick, if a little scratchy. "It doesn't - ow!"

"Sorry, Tess," he said, manipulating her swollen ankle with experienced hands. "If it's any consolation, I think you're right. It's not broken. Now, if I can just dig up an elastic bandage…"

The first aid kit he'd stowed here did turn out to have one, although it was lacking most of the supplies he would've needed if either of them had suffered more severe injuries. As he wrapped her ankle tightly, he took a moment to curse his less-than-thorough contingency planning and thanked the fates in the same instant for getting them both through this with nothing worse than a sprained ankle and a little hypothermia.

Tessa had gone quiet, he realized suddenly, and was watching him with an inscrutable expression.

"What?" he asked, frowning. She gave him a Mona Lisa smile, coy and enigmatic.

"You never did tell me why you took this job."

Eliot stayed silent for a long moment, considering his answer. While he thought, he moved around the room, double-checking the deadbolt on the door and the lock on the sole window in the apartment before turning off the lamp and returning to the bed. He slid in beside her, using the scant light coming in through the window as a guide, and Tessa shifted onto her side to watch him.

"I took it because it was convenient," he said finally, with a little shrug. "I'd just finished another job, and I was at loose ends."

"Is that it?"

"Yeah. Well, that, and I heard you were here."

"Did you?" she asked, her lips curving upward again. "You know, I seem to remember telling you that if you found me, I'd owe you a kiss. After today, I'd say you've earned it."

He pushed himself up on one elbow, his gaze meeting hers with heated intensity. Her eyes slid shut as he leaned in closer, her lips parting, and she let out a soft gasp when he brushed his lips chastely against her forehead.

"Eliot?" she murmured, uncertain, and opened her eyes to look at him. His smile took her breath away.

"I don't want you kissin' me because you feel like you owe me somethin', Tess." He stroked her hair away from her face, his strong hand gentle. "And I'm not gonna take advantage of you while you're all wrung out. When we get together, it'll be because you want to, not because you feel like you have to."

She leaned into his touch, his thumb brushing against her cheek as happiness bubbled up inside her and threatened to overflow.

"When we get together?" she murmured with a grin, trying not to show how much his words affected her. "Not 'if'?"

"You tell me," he replied easily. "C'mere, darlin'."

He pulled her into the circle of his arms, her head settling on his bare chest and her body flush against his. He flinched but didn't complain when her icy toes brushed against the tops of his feet; he'd promised to keep her warm, and that included letting her defrost her frozen feet against him.

"Mmm…you're warm."

"Yeah, well, you're cold," he rejoined, running his hand down her back through the thin fabric of the t-shirt, and he had the satisfaction of feeling her shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. "Are you gonna be all right? I could try to go out and hunt down another blanket -"

"Not with Brown and his guys still out there," she replied. "I assume they don't know about this place."

"It's called a safe house for a reason."

"Then we'll lay low here tonight, and tomorrow you'll find me some decent clothes and a replacement for my favorite Walther, which is currently lying in a watery grave at the bottom of the River Liffey -"

"Sorry about that, by the way," he interrupted. "If I'd know you couldn't swim -"

"I can swim," she shot back, defensive. "Just not well. And nearly drowning is probably better than being shot, so you're forgiven, as long as you get me a new gun tomorrow and let me have the first shot at Brown."

"I'll flip you for it."

She grinned in the near-darkness, curling a little closer to him.

"You know what? I think I like Dublin."

"Which part of it do you like?" he asked, disbelieving. "The part where we were betrayed by our employer, or the part where a couple of his guys chased us into a river where you developed hypothermia?"

"It's a beautiful city," she replied with a shrug. "Even the new parts seem old. Kind of historically quaint, you know? And the people are nice, except the ones who are trying to kill us."

"You might be a little bit crazy, Tess."

"You have no idea." Her hand found his under the blanket and she intertwined her fingers with his, their palms pressed together. "We should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow."

"Catching Brown and his crew is only going to be half the battle, you know," he told her, and she frowned.

"What else do you have planned?"

He smiled up at the ceiling, knowing she couldn't see his expression and hoping he wasn't about to get punched again. His jaw was still sore from the first time she'd decked him.

"Swimming lessons."

* * *

_Where the rubber meets the road  
__Welcome to protection mode  
__Boy meets girl, then watch it explode  
__Where the rubber meets the road_


End file.
